


As Above, So Below

by callous_and_misunderstood



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Demons, Magic, Multi, Physical Abuse, Witch!Carlos, Witches, all the core four have magic, witch!AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29910207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callous_and_misunderstood/pseuds/callous_and_misunderstood
Summary: This is my dark Witch!AU, as inspired by @hersilentlanguage.Carlos makes a deal with a demon, not knowing the demon has bigger plans.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12





	1. Give and Take

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hersilentlanguage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hersilentlanguage/gifts).



> This chapter does have a graphic scene of physical/emotional abuse.

Carlos had found the pages buried in the woods.

He had been digging up mushrooms, trying to scavenge enough for a meal. His stomach ached from being empty, his last meal days ago. In the woods where Chernabog made his home was where the only edible plants on the Isle grew. Everywhere else all that emerged from the blackened dirt was lethal, if it even made it above ground.

Carlos assumed it had something to do with the decay that the god feasted on. His killings gave way to a new life, one that Carlos had stumbled upon years ago. When it was too risky to fight for scraps at the barges or when he knew better than to slink around the marketplace, he ate the blood red caps growing from the roots of dead trees. He knew better than to just take, though.

Taking from Chernabog, even if he hadn’t been seen since the villains’ imprisonment on the Isle, was just foolish. Everyone knew that should he emerge or take interest in the daily life on the Isle, all would immediately bow to his power. Even Maleficent, the self-proclaimed Mistress of Evil, knew better than to even suggest she was more powerful than him. Even Hades, god of the literal underworld, made sure to stay on Chernabog’s good side for the same reason.

Chernabog was power and fear, cruelty and malice, wickedness and agony. He was the living embodiment of True Evil.

So Carlos always left something in return for taking the fungi: little machines he fixed up or scraps of fur that his mother discarded. They were always gone from the spot he left them when he next returned. Today he had brought a small radio he had managed to get service from Auradon on. It only played the sports channel and a classical music station, but Carlos liked to imagine that Chernabog would enjoy a chance to connect to the outside world. He may be the most powerful villain to ever live, but he was still stuck on the Isle like everyone else.

The mushrooms weren’t a delicacy, of course. It was still the Isle, and Carlos would have to choke down the flesh-like caps. But it was the only food he could get that didn’t require thieving or fighting, which meant it was valuable, and his last resort. So he gently dug out the mushrooms, prying them from the dead bark and placing them on his coat that he had spread on the ground. Soon his stomach could take no more emptiness, and he scarfed them down raw, doing his best to ignore how they tasted like molten ash. He followed each bite with a swig of water from his canteen, but the flavor of death lingered on his tongue.

After his stomach settled a bit, he picked a few more to take back for emergencies. The last one he reached for crumbled to dust as soon as his fingers brushed the stem.

“Huh,” he said aloud, looking at the spot in the bark where the mushroom had been. There was something…almost white tucked into the crevice. Carlos shimmied the object a bit, then gently pulled the dead bark from either side. The object fell to the ground.

It was paper, wrapped in a tight roll. Carlos picked it up. The outermost page was blank, with only a black wax seal at the seam. He held the roll a moment, wondering if he should put it back. It seemed to have been hidden for a reason. But what would someone have hidden all the way out here? And for it to be behind a mushroom seemed…intentional. Like someone wanted Carlos to find it. 

A harsh wind blew through the dead branches and Carlos shivered. For a moment he almost thought he heard the wind whisper the words _It’s Yours_.

He shook his head and pulled back on his jacket, stuffing the last mushrooms from his pick into his bag. He hesitated for one more moment, before sliding the papers into his bag as well. Worst case scenario, he would bring it back and pretend he’d never taken it in the first place.

Carlos arrived home to find his mother absent from their mansion, so he climbed into his treehouse to look at the papers he’d found. He stared intently at the wax seal, trying to see if there was a stamp or seal to tell him who the papers belong to. There was nothing but an empty circle pressed into the wax.

Carlos took a deep breath, then slid his fingers across the seam, breaking the seal. He closed his eyes, unsure of what would happen. A light tingle covered his entire body, just for a moment, then it was gone. Carlos slowly opened his eyes and gazed at the papers in his hand. They were covered in black ink, a spidery scrawl in words Carlos couldn’t quite decipher. They seemed familiar, but also not. Maybe Latin? Carlos squinted at the words, trying to sound them out. Suddenly, he stopped. These papers…they were…

“Spells,” Carlos whispered to himself, tracing the words with his fingers. “These are…for magic.”

He spread out the pages in a circle around his perch on the floor. They were all written in the same handwriting, some with diagrams or symbols drawn beneath words. They seemed to be old, based on the yellowing, but weren’t fragile. He sounded out each title, the language an incredibly Old English: Spell for Breaking Things, Spell for Assembling Things, Spell for Emotional Manipulation, Spell for Deception, and so on. There were about twenty spells in total, of varying degrees of usefulness. Then, there was one page labeled “ _Invoking the Power_ ”.

This one was the most appealing to Carlos. He knew he didn’t have any inherited magic. At worst, he inherited his mother’s insanity, but definitely not magic. However, page detailed how to call upon forces from other dimensions to imbue the summoner with unlimited powers with or without previous magical abilities.

Of course, it didn’t mention what kind of power would be given, or what kinds of forces would be summoned, or what it cost the summoner. Those were the things that made magic dangerous.

But the concept of having _power_ …of never having to fight for scraps of food, or having to bow down to other villains, or even never taking another hit of abuse from his mother… That is what he wanted. He wanted to stop feeling powerless. And ultimate power would sure help with that.

Carlos sat in his treehouse reading the page on “Invoking the Power” over and over. It was the simplest spell from the stack, which was surprising considering how formidable it was. He mouthed the words, practiced drawing the summoning circle on the floor (which was required to be done in blood for the real deal), and fantasized about being in control of his life. As the afternoon sun sank in the sky, he dozed off, dreaming of a bald mountain and the god that lived inside of it.

* * *

On the other side of the Isle, a purple-haired half fae was pacing the single room of her hideout anxiously, chewing on her nails as she walked back and forth, waiting for her companion, Evie, to give a verdict on her newest spell. Evie sighed dramatically, reading through the spell Mal had scribbled onto the back of her math homework.

“Mal, I can’t read this,” the blue haired girl complained, though she only half-meant it. Mal’s handwriting was an acquired taste, and Evie had gotten used to it years ago. Still, it wouldn’t hurt the other girl to write legibly if she wanted other people to read it.

“Ugh, sorry,” Mal huffed, blowing air towards her purple bangs. “I was in a hurry.”

“A hu-mph-rry fr-uh-m wh-ummph?” Jay asked around a bite of a mostly rotten apple, sitting backwards in a chair, eyes tracking Mal’s movements. Evie frowned and the Arabian boy smiled sheepishly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why were you hurrying, Mal?”

“I…borrowed it from Dr. Facilier’s library,” Mal said coolly, examining her nails.

“So is it even any good?” Jay laughed, thinking about the voodoo practitioner whose magic fell apart at the seams as soon his ‘friends on the other side’ showed up.

Mal shrugged haughtily, turning to look at Evie, who gave a slow nod as she reached the end of the scribbled notes.

“It might be. I just don’t know if we have access to enough of the materials…or if the barrier will prevent it or not.”

“That damn barrier,” Mal hissed, slamming her hands on the table. “It’s honestly cruel to deny magic to people who have it!”

“I mean, it is Auradon’s doing,” Jay gave a shrug. “Not like they think we’re people. But... Ya know what? I overheard something about the barrier the other day, actually.

Madam Mim and Gothel were talking in front of my dad’s store. They said something about intention affecting the barrier. Like, evil intentions with magic not working because of the barrier but…Mim said her daughter Maddy accidentally did some magic the other week, and it was probably because she wasn’t intending to do any evil with it. It was small, but it happened, according to Mim. So, yeah. We might be able to do magic within the barrier. As long as it isn’t evil.”

Both girls turned sharply to Jay, who shrugged again.

“Jay!” Mal snapped. “You didn’t think to share that with us sooner?”

“I dunno, most of the stuff we’ve been looking at has been pretty evil, Mal. I didn’t think it would matter.”

Evie laced her hands together and rested her chin on them, her dark brown eyes looking into the distance thoughtfully.

“You know, Jay has a point. Everything we’ve found has been asking for _huge_ amounts of magic. We should probably start smaller, and then work our way up. Getting anything to work would be better than nothing. And if it’s small it’ll be safer for us, especially if something goes wrong.”

Mal sighed, placing a hand on her hip. She hated to be challenged, even when she knew that her cohorts were right.

“Fine, then. I’ll find something smaller,” Mal snatched the paper from in front of Evie.

“And…well,” Evie hesitated, then spoke in an incredibly soft tone, her eyes cast downwards. “We should still be looking for a fourth member.”

The subject was a sensitive one. The other two both took on defensive stances at the thought of letting someone else into their inner circle, especially since they had all been alone for so long.

“We don’t need anyone else,” Mal flipped her hair.

“Yeah, what’s wrong with just us?” Jay folded his arms, his eyes narrowing.

Evie fidgeted under the scrutiny of her companions but pressed on.

“Every text I’ve come across says group magic is strongest with four members. One for each of the elements, you know. We have air”—she pointed at Mal— “fire”—she pointed at Jay— “and water”—she gestured to herself. “But we need someone for earth. And if we’re going to get through the barrier …another person just might be the final push we need.”

There was a tense silence as Jay and Mal processed what Evie said.

“I guess you’re right, Eves,” Jay relented. “ _Four hearts as one_ , isn’t that what your ‘prophetic dream’ spell says, Mal?”

“Don’t joke about that,” Mal said quickly, her eyes flashing bright green for only a second. “But I guess you’re right, E. Four is a stronger number.”

“So we’ll look for a fourth, and for smaller magic to practice,” Evie said definitively. She nodded and then stood, glancing out the window. “I should head home.”

Jay followed her gaze and nodded in agreement. It was getting dark, which meant the Isle got even more…villainous.

“I’ll walk you home, Princess. Mal, you wanna come?”

“Nah, I’m gonna stay here tonight. See you at school.”

Evie and Jay left Mal staring at the spell she had copied down, mouthing each word silently, eyebrows drawn together tightly.

Mal knew she was supposed to have magic. She had felt it, ever since she was little, burning under her skin. She was Maleficent’s daughter, after all. Even having a mortal father couldn’t fully smother the fae blood in her veins. She _had_ to be magic. Otherwise her mother would have no reason to keep her around.

But Evie was right. Finding a fourth member would make their magic stronger, assuming they could get it to work within the barrier. Mal had read everything and listened to anyone who would speak about the barrier.

When King Adam, formerly ‘the Beast’, had forced all ‘villains’ (and anyone mildly associated with them) on to the Isle of the Lost, he employed all the ‘good’ magicians to create the barrier. It prevented anyone on the Isle from physically leaving, as well as any use of magic.

It also blocked the wi-fi and electricity, which was just obnoxious. Everything had to be done in the old-fashioned way, from heating water with wood stoves to using oil lamps once the sun went down. Everyone who had lived pre-Isle complained about the lack of technology constantly, though there was mostly nothing to be done.

There was a kid on the Isle who was supposed to be exceptionally good with machines, and more of their creations had been popping up across the town. They posed a potential threat to Mal’s plan to run the Isle with her mother (eventually). But, at the end of the day, what was more valuable, a machine that might work, or _magic_?

Mal sighed, flopping on to the mattress that they had dragged up from the docks. Evie had sewn a quilted cover for it to keep the springs from digging into Mal’s back when she spent the night sleeping on it. Mal fiddled with a loose thread and stared up at the discolored ceiling, thinking.

Their hideout was just a few blocks from the marketplace, but relatively secure as the building was mostly storage for merchants. No one bothered with the top floor, and the three of them made sure to keep the rumors that the floor was rotted through alive. But it was in fact an entirely intact floor, which they had filled with sort-of-fixed furniture and discarded items (saying something, since the Isle only got the leftovers from the mainland of Auradon). But Mal considered it to be more of a home than her mother’s castle. Here, at least, she could live without her mother lurking around every corner, hoping that Mal would finally manifest her magic.

She, Jay, and Evie had ended up bonding a few years ago in at school. The school on the Isle was a complete joke, but Mal had noticed how easily the potion making class came to Evie. She approached her right after their first class, and Evie had been a valuable ally ever since. Her mother was the Evil Queen, the one who tried to kill Snow White over and over until finally, the poison apple almost did the job. Apparently, the Evil Queen’s obsession with remaining beautiful had prompted Evie to invest in potion making to provide her mother beauty creams, in order to avoid her mother’s rage at aging being taken out on her.

Jay had come soon after, when he couldn’t stop trying to steal from both Evie and Mal in the hallways at school. Jafar, a once powerful sorcerer and the Sultan of Arabia’s vizier, had raised Jay to stock his junk shop with goods pilfered from the Isle’s inhabitants. Mal confronted him after he ‘stole’ a pendant from her (Mal had planned the whole thing). Jay had sheepishly apologized (though he did not return the necklace), and in further conversation hinted he may have inherited some lingering effects from his father’s time as an all-powerful Genie, so Mal recruited him to join her and Evie in their pursuit of magic. Jay also added the needed brawn to their team, acting as a sort of body guard to the two girls. While Mal knew she could stand on her own, Evie was susceptible to physical confrontation as she favored more subtle approaches (poison and flirting her way out of things). But those didn’t work well in the halls of a school full of villains, so Jay gave Evie that layer of added protection.

But what Mal really gave them both immunity from the true villains by being associated with Maleficent’s child. No one would lay a finger on someone who ran with Mal, out of respect (or rather, fear) of her mother. And all Mal asked in return was they help her make magic work on the Isle.

So far nothing had succeeded. But Mal had grown too fond of Jay and Evie to ditch them, despite her mother’s badgering to find stronger ‘henchmen’. The three of them kept digging and trying, even though they suspected they would be magic-less for the rest of their lives.

* * *

Carlos jolted awake to an ear-splitting shriek sounding from the mansion behind him. Carlos drew his shoulders up to his ears and screwed his eyes shut. His mother was home.

“Carloooooos!”

Carlos frantically shoved the papers under a pile of scrap metal and climbed down from the treehouse as fast as he could. Every second his mother spent waiting was a second he was sure to be punished for. He dashed inside the house, taking care to wipe any mud off his shoes.

His mother was standing in the living room, sucking down a cigarette. Carlos stood in the doorway silently, waiting for her to acknowledge him.

“Carlos,” she said shortly. “I left you a list of chores today, did I not?”

Carlos tried not to move as he prepared an answer, prey in the sight of a predator, his heart pounding. She hadn’t; he had searched the house twice for any scrap of paper that would have his list of chores on it and had come up with nothing. But he couldn’t tell her that. That would make her even more furious than she already was.

“Yes, mother,” he lied quietly.

“And did you do those chores?” she let out a long breath of smoke.

“No, mother.”

Cruella De Vil turned to face her son. Her eyes were ringed with red and her gaze was sharp. Her black and white hair was beginning to grey, but still meticulously maintained. She wore a scruffy black fur coat that had seen better days and a slinky black dress that hung limply from her gaunt figure. Her nails were painted bright red, and filed into points, becoming more like talons than nails. She was semi-lucid, which meant that Carlos couldn’t plead his way out of this.

He clenched his jaw and moved his gaze directly in front of him. Better not to look at her, not to see what was coming.

Carlos smelled his flesh burning before he felt it. His mother’s lit cigarette was pressed down on his upper arm. He stood as still as possible, knowing that any movement would extend his punishment.

“Hmm,” Cruella sighed under her breath. “It’s like you don’t even feel it any more, do you, puppy?”

Carlos said nothing, and kept his gaze straight ahead. His heart pounded wildly. ‘Puppy’ was not a term of endearment; it was a term of loathing.

Suddenly the pain in his arm was replaced with a sharp smack across his face. Cruella’s nails dragged on the follow through, and Carlos felt blood spring to his cheek.

“Did you feel that, puppy?”

Carlos choked back a whimper as Cruella’s hand closed around his neck, shoving him against a wall. Carlos focused all his energy on not fighting back, on resisting the urge to claw his mother’s hand away from his throat. She squeezed and Carlos gasped for air, feeling the warm rush of blood where her nails broke skin. He watched the edges of his vision start to fade and then suddenly he was on his knees on the floor. He braced himself with both hands as he sucked in air, watching blood droplets gather beneath him. Then he was on his side, gasping again, watching his mother’s heel swing back for another kick. He curled against himself, arms up to protect his face, knees up to protect his organs. That didn’t deter Cruella from her fury, and she kept kicking.

At some point, Carlos became aware of his surroundings again. Cruella was snoring on the couch, an empty moonshine bottle and half-finished cigarette besides her. Carlos stretched himself out of the balled position he had been in, wincing. He hadn’t lost too much blood, judging from the small stain where he had been laying and that all of his wounds were crusting into scabs.

He stood slowly, disoriented. Still just as slowly he trudged to the kitchen and retrieved the cleaning supplies from under the cupboard. Then he eked his way back to the living room and silently scrubbed up his own blood. It would do him no good if Cruella woke up and saw it. This was not the first time he’d mopped up his own bodily fluids while the person responsible for his wounds slept soundly.

His mother was a villain. And villains didn’t love their kids. If you were lucky, they liked you. If you were unlucky, well. Villains didn’t know love, and neither would their offspring.

Carlos scrubbed and scrubbed, lost in the way the dark stain lifted ever so slowly out of the rotting wood floor. He scrubbed until the night was well under way and he couldn’t see his hands in front of his face in the dark. Then he stopped, put away his sponge and bucket, and stumbled back to his treehouse. His mother would look for him in the closet that was his bedroom tomorrow, but for the rest of the night he wanted to feel safe.

He hauled himself into the rickety wooden room, and lay limply on the floor. He was tired. Tired of feeling pathetic as he submitted to his mother’s unstable whim, of fighting to survive. He was tired of being alone, of facing each day with a dull ache of loneliness. But most of all, he was tired of being weak, being _powerless_. 

He stood in his treehouse, his last safe space in the world, swaying. He knew what he wanted, what he needed. Fumbling, he pulled out “Summoning the Power”. Carlos knew what he wanted.

He peeled at the fresh scabs on his face and neck until they were dribbling blood. And then, he swiped his fingers into his wounds and began to draw the summoning circle.

As he drew—a slow process, reaching back up to his skin every few moments for more blood—he muttered the words he had memorized off the page earlier.

“Spirit, I invoke thee, I take into myself all of your power and all of your will. Spirit, I invoke thee, I take into myself all of your power and all of your will.”

He kept chanting as finished the circle, slowly laying down in the center, exhausted. Carlos let his eyes slide shut as he mumbled the last word of the spell.

* * *

Chernabog was delighted when he felt Carlos enact the summoning he had left the young boy. It had been far too long since the god had had a mortal to play with, and this ‘Carlos’ was respectful of the true laws of magic without even knowing that’s what he was doing. Chernabog chuckled as he cracked his knuckles, the sounds of classical music spilling from a recently repaired radio.

This would be fun. And if everything went as he had planned, soon the Isle of the Lost would be destroyed and Auradon would again tremble under his shadow.


	2. Ashes to Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos gets his magic; Ben is introduced; the barrier is broken

Carlos knows he is dreaming. He has to be, because he is climbing a mountain which he’d only heard of in folktales. The air is swirling with thick, red fog and it hurts to breathe. His hands are caked in mud and blood. His vision goes in and out of focus. He climbs.

At the top of the mountain a shadowy figure looms, waiting for Carlos. The shadow is patient. He’s waited twenty years, and before that hundreds. The boy will reach the top, and then it can all begin.

Carlos heaves himself onto the plateau, panting. He stands, looking into the shadows, letting the hot breath of the shadow wash across his face. It’s almost a caress, gentle, but then it stings like his skin is being ripped off. Carlos does not move, does not falter. 

“ _You dare to invoke my powers?”_ the shadow figure says, the voice crushing Carlos’s ribs with its force.

“Yes,” Carlos says, surprised to find his voice steady. He wasn’t afraid. Logically he should be, but in this dream, he feels…brave. Powerful.

The shadow laughs and it sounds like thunder.

“ _And do you deserve them?_ ”

Carlos swallows, his throat dry. He thinks of the market, the vendors dangling rotted food just out of reach. He thinks of school, the other kids taking pleasure in his misery. He thinks of the Isle itself, a prison turned hell-on-earth. He thinks how he’s never seen a green plant or felt the sun on his skin. He thinks how he has been denied any semblance of kindness his entire life. He thinks of the weeks spent totally alone, his voice drying up from the silence he sits in. He thinks of his mother, her talons breaking through his skin and her scream ripping his heart to shreds.

And then he thinks of the rage he has buried deep, deep inside him. Rage doesn’t help with surviving and so he’d hidden it all, forgotten about the fury that pummeled his body with white hot fists. But in front of this shadow, this god, Carlos sets his anger free.

He lets himself feel the choking aggression, the need to destroy and tear and hurt. His vision swarms red and he froths for the power, the chance to unleash himself on the world. His body trembles with frenzy. He wants to stand in the ashes of a world he burned into extinction. 

He doesn’t answer the shadow with words, just _feels_ his anger wash over him like a tide. And the shadow nods.

_“A worthy cause, young one. You are indeed deserving of the power I offer._

_Now, brace yourself. This will hurt_.”

Carlos awakens to pain beyond anything he’d ever imagined.

He feels like he’s being electrocuted, only with something more ferocious than electricity. Like lightning and a storming sea warring inside his body. Like the air is being pulled out of him and there’s dirt filling his lungs. It’s…magic. He’s being filled with magic.

Carlos locks his jaw to keep from shouting and forces open his eyes, only to quickly shut them against the blinding light surrounding him.

Slowly, he opened his eyes again and tried to observe what was going on. The light was an unnatural white, pulsing and slithering around the room. Carlos looked down at himself, still convulsing with pain, though his mind had slipped away from his physical body. He was floating several inches above the ground, limbs splayed unnaturally in the air. The light was latching on to him, entering his skin in lightning-like bolts. But once the light clawed its way beneath his skin, it turned to black rivers, pushing themselves into his veins.

Carlos gasped for breath, feeling the magic twist itself into the bronchi of his lungs, filtering every intake and outtake through its dark desire. The rhythm of his heart changed, beating more softly and more frequently, like a frantic whisper in the dark.

If Carlos could see himself, he would see how the white space in his eyes was now red, every blood vessel burst and blooming. He would see how his skin became more and more translucent, until his freckles were constellations scattered across the dark magic swirling within him. He would see fangs pushing out of his gaping mouth and his nails suddenly sharper than any knife. He would see the crackles of energy gathering around him, pushing anything it touched away from its host. He would see someone—something—to be feared.

_So, this is magic_ , he thought hazily, letting his body absorb what he had invoked, his vision fading to black. _So, this is power_.

* * *

The Crown Prince of the United Kingdoms of Auradon sat up bolt right in his bed, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and panting heavily. He wasn’t usually affected by his dreams, but this nightmare had felt too tangible and too detailed to brush off. It felt like a warning.

In his nightmare, a boy had climbed a mountain swathed in thick, red smoke. When he came back down, he wasn’t a boy anymore, but a demon more powerful than anything that had come before. And he was going to turn Auradon into ash. 

* * *

Carlos came to as the first rays of sunlight appeared in the morning. Of course, on the Isle, the sunlight was just a lighter grey than the dark grey that was the night. But still, it was a weak warmth that woke the island of villains each morning, and Carlos blinked blearily into the light.

His body ached from the inside out. He was curled tightly around himself on his treehouse floor, in the middle of the circle he had etched in his own blood.

With a low groan, Carlos pushed himself up into a sitting position. School, he decided, was not on his agenda today. It’s not like anyone would miss him. School was just a place villain parents sent their kids to keep them out of the house for most of the day. The most useful thing he had learned was how to fight kids bigger than him.

Carlos stretched, taking assessment of himself. He felt _different_ , though a quick glance in a cracked windowpane showed he looked no different. Still pale and freckled, hair black at the roots and white by the ends of the strands. Still dark brown eyes, maybe more bloodshot than normal, but the same Carlos.

He sighed, turning to look at the pages of spells scattered across the floor. And then he stiffened, remembering the excruciating pain he had endured during night. If his memory was correct…

Carlos frantically spread the pages out, pulling out the page labeled Spell for Assembling Things. He skimmed the instructions, then turned to the machine he had been working on for nearly a year.

It was supposed to penetrate the magic barrier around the Isle, to allow him to reach the internet connection that lingered just outside of the bubble he lived in. He didn’t want for much, staying realistic about what he could actually attain. Having access to the knowledge Auradon kept from him, from the Isle…that is what he wanted. He wanted to know what life could be, what the people in Auradon were living like while the residents of the Isle slowly rotted away. He wanted to know that there was something better than the hell he lived in. That was all. He was curious. 

But for the past year, for all his tinkering and fiddling, the machine had sat, unbidding and useless. Now, though…

Carlos stood, swaying slightly as he stared at his machine. He knew how it should work, that it should work, with all the parts he’d placed so delicately. It was just missing something to power it, as every source he had tried so far resulted in a cloud of black smoke.

He lifted his dominant hand, his left, as the spell instructed. And he focused on how he knew the machine should work.

How the first gear would turn then the second and then the belt would begin to spin, and then, like magic but more tangible, the machine would let lose a bolt of energy that would puncture a hole in the barrier, small, almost non-existent, but large enough for him to harness the brief moment of information that slipped through.

Carlos sucked in a deep breath, letting go slowly, picturing all the cogs turning in his mind. Now, all he had to do was hope he could use his new magic within the barrier that was supposed to prevent it.

A beautiful tingling feeling began to spread from his core to the tips of his fingers, something hot and wonderful.

He had expected some kind of white lightning, like what had entered him the night before, to shoot from his fingertips and zap his machine. But there was no sign his magic was the thing that suddenly brought the machine clanking to life. No sparks or smoke signaled that magic was at play.

The warmth slid out of Carlos’s hand, leaving him clammy. His magic had worked, even inside the barrier. He approached his machine. The gears were turning smoothly, everything keeping an even tempo. It was working.

Giddily, Carlos switched on the laptop he had built out of the junked computers Auradon sent over with the rest of the trash. He opened the wi-fi selection, then pressed the ‘ON’ button on his machine. With a sputter, the machine vibrated violently. Carlos watched the computer screen intently.

There.

The computer flashed white and images of Auradon blasted across the screen at a furious speed. Pictures of the land, the people, the buildings, the food.

For ten seconds, Carlos had access to the world outside the Isle. For ten glorious seconds, he saw what his life should have been: warm, nourishing, loving, safe.

And then the machine sputtered violently and went silent. 

Carlos stood, his anger that he’d kept down for so long rising again. He had known Auradon was pathetic, but he hadn’t realized they were cruel.

Keeping people trapped in a prison, feeding them leftover scraps from their banquets, sending only what had been deemed broken or unusable. The Isle residents lived in shacks and wore clothes that were beyond threadbare. People died every winter because there was no heat, and then in the summer, more starved because the food arrived even more spoiled when it was hot. It was inhumane. He didn’t care that the villains had once wreaked havoc on the land. This was an active and on-going choice to condemn people to death, even people that were hardly ‘evil’. This was a choice to let children, who came into this world hoping for love, suffer a worse fate than any of the trials the so-called heroes had faced.

Carlos knew what true evil looked like now. It looked like Auradon. And Auradon would fall by his hand.

* * *

Mal was waiting for Evie and Jay in the front of the Isle’s ‘school’ when she suddenly kneeled over in pain. It was a brief flash that shot through her entire body, gone before she even fully realized it was there. But she still gasped for breath, trying to figure out what had just happened.

As she slowly stood, she looked around the school yard. It seemed that some of the other students had been hit with the same thing she had; a few were curled or crouched on the ground, looking as stunned as she felt.

“Mal,” Jay’s voice called to her.

She turned to see both him and Evie hobbling towards her. It looks like they’d felt it too.

“What was that?” Evie asked, rubbing her arms.

“Fucking hurt,” Jay muttered, looking around nervously for the cause.

Mal shifted, unable to answer Evie’s question. She genuinely had no idea what had caused that, and why some of the other kids seemed to have not felt the sharp pain. And why had it ended so quickly?

Jay and Evie seemed to have recovered from the incident quicker than Mal. They were tense but seemed focused. Mal, however, was still slightly unsteady, though she did her best to hide it.

The bell rang and the other kids began filing into the school.

“Keep a close eye on everything today,” she advised her friends as they made their way into the building cautiously. “Look for anything—and I mean anything—out of the normal. If someone has a different colored pen, I want you to notice.”

“Got it,” Jay said with a fake salute. The three parted ways and went to their classes.

Mal kept an eye out all day for anything that might tell her what exactly had happened that morning. But school was as boring as ever. By the time her last class ended, she had nearly forgotten the incident.

Evie had not. She waited impatiently by the front steps for Jay and Mal to emerge, tapping her foot. She didn’t fully understand the incident that morning, but she had figured out some clues, including who might have been behind it. And if she was right about the culprit, well, then they would have their fourth.

Jay and Mal finally sauntered down the steps, and Evie grabbed them both by the wrists. She dragged them away from the school, heading towards their hideout.

“Woah, girl,” Jay said, stumbling a bit as he tried to keep up with Evie’s breakneck speed.

“E? What’s going on?” Mal demanded, trying to pry her wrist loose from Evie’s iron grasp.

“I’ll explain where it’s safe,” Evie said, tight lipped. She wasn’t sure who else on the Isle had put together the pieces and didn’t want to give anything away.

Once the door to their hideout was bolted behind them, and Evie had done a quick scan through the filthy windows to ensure they were alone, she turned to the other two. They were impatient and confused, eager to know what had Evie all riled up.

“This morning? That pain?” she began, trying not to ramble but she’d been fixating on this all day. “That was our _magic_.”

“What?” Mal gave her a strange look, like Evie had finally cracked.

“Listen to me! That was our magic, having been trying to get to us for sixteen years but being held back by the barrier! That’s why it hurt, it was the magic equivalent of a nuclear bomb going off inside of us. All the years of build-up, suddenly released!”

“Are you saying…” Jay frowned in concentration, thinking through what Evie was saying. “The barrier was…broken?”

Evie nodded aggressively, pacing, her theory making even more sense as she said it aloud.

“Not the whole barrier, that would have been more obvious, more severe. But I think someone…punctured a hole in it. And for a few seconds, everything that was being held out was let in. Magic, wi-fi, weather. All of it. But the magic…that was the thing that was noticeable, in that short of a time frame. And that’s why not everyone was affected, it was just anyone with a magical link. So, our parents felt it, too.”

“A hole in the barrier,” Mal murmured. “And you think it was someone? Not just a weird, magic fluke?”

“Yes,” Evie took a deep breath. “And I think I know who it was.”

* * *

_Carlos De Vil_

Prince Ben wrote the name on the list of kids he was planning to bring to Auradon for a second chance at being good. Or rather, a first chance, since children weren’t born evil.

He had been working on the arrangements for months. Four children of villains, two girls and two boys, were going to be enrolled in Auradon Prep with him. If the transition went smoothly, they would live in Auradon permanently and more children would be brought over.

Ben had never agreed with the decision to create an island prison for the villains. Sure, his father had been trying to protect the law-abiding citizens of Auradon.

But Ben was racked with guilt every time he thought about who actually lived on the Isle of the Lost. So many of the people who had ended up there were not truly evil. Sure, some of the big names were _evil_ -evil, and had no chance for redemption. Maleficent. Captain Hook. Ursula. Gaston. But a lot of the Isle residents were henchmen, guilty only by association, or children, born after their parents had been banished.

He was set to take his role as Auradon’s King in just four months. He wasn’t taking over as High King quite yet, his father would stay in that role for a while longer. But Ben had the power to bring over children from the Isle as High Prince and as soon to be King, and by placing them under his ruling jurisdiction, they were his responsibility fully.

Most of the other royalty were firmly against his decision, his father especially. But Ben had the support of Agrabah, Northern Wei, and Camelot. It was no majority, but it was something. If everything went smoothly with his first round of Isle kids, the other three countries had agreed to try their own placement programs for more Isle kids.

Sighing, Ben reviewed the list of Isle kids. He had decided long ago to pull some of the bigger name’s kids, trying to make sure they were all around the same age. Daughter of Maleficent. Daughter of the Evil Queen. Son of Jafar.

Originally, he had planned to bring over Captain Hook’s son, but it turns out Hook had more than one kid, which made it complicated to bring over just one of them. He had to do quite a bit of digging through the barge goblins’ reports on the Isle to find another only child. Finally, he’d came across a mention of a boy about the age he was looking for. Maybe a year or so younger than the ideal 16, but he would do well enough for Ben’s purposes.

Son of Cruella De Vil.

And with that, Ben sent off the list to the board who was helping him with the nitty-gritty of the placement program. He really needed to come up with a more…tactful name for the program. Villain Kid Placement Program didn’t quite roll off the tongue. He added that to his ever-growing to-do list and turned to look out the window.

The Isle sat just on the horizon, a gloom covered rock in the middle of the bay. Ben hoped he was doing the right thing for Auradon, and for the Villain Kids. The memory of the boy from his nightmare popped into his head unbidden.

Ben shivered. He really, really hoped he was doing the right thing. 


End file.
